Re: Authors recommendation?
Some are pretty standard recommendations on this forum, but anyway:
- Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze. Explains very thoroughly the limits the German war economy was operating under, and ultimately why they had to lose.
- Britain's War Machine - David Edgerton. Not quite as good at Tooze, but the two benefit strongly from being read together. Essentially he's doing the same for the UK as Tooze does for Germany, and it's very illuminating how badly the Germans were outclassed (and indeed how much of Britain being in trouble was wartime myth-making).
- Business in Great Waters and The Right of the Line - John Terraine. Terraine is always very good, and covers the U-boat threat in both world wars and the RAF in WW2 respectively very well.
- To Lose a Battle - Alistair Horne. Heavy going, but an excellent explanation of how the battle of France went so badly wrong (and which in turn set the scene for the rest of the war).
- Blitzkrieg - Len Deighton. Covers the same territory as Horne, but a great deal easier to read (I finished it in about a day, Horne took a month or so!). Nowhere near as comprehensive though.
Moving slightly wider, a lot of WW1 stuff is worth reading as it relates closely to WW2. There are also several WW2 memoirs worth reading - Defeat into Victory, Popski's Private Army and Eastern Approaches spring to mind.
Last edited by pdf27; 09-27-2014 at 03:58 AM.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to differentiate between the incompetent and the merely unfortunate - Curtis E LeMay
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